Pitch: We’re a financial service built for people, not banks – the Robin Hood of currency exchange.

Verdict: In this bank-loathing climate, most of us baulk at their charges. Timely and cheap then, Transferwise has every chance of carving out a sizeable niche in the currency exchange market. However, trust takes time to build.

Founders: Oxford graduates and ex-management consultants Matt Robinson, Hiroki Takeuchi and Tom Blomfield. Robinson started his first business at 16, which funded his law degree, while Blomfield launched Boso.com, while at Oxford.

What: A web courier service, offering delivery of online purchases within 90 minutes, which acts as an aggregator for local couriers by pooling capacity and offering it to retailers. Clients include Argos, Coast and Oasis.

What: A reboot of the takeaway or “social dining”, Housebites arranges for a local professional chef to cook a meal of your choice, delivered to your doorstep.

Founders:Simon Prockter – who set up SpeedDater, which evolved into a dating site and was sold in 2008 – and Paul Birch.

Launched: 2010

Pitch: We’ve handed the power over to you and the chef. Now you can engage directly with the person who cooks your food, and see or provide feedback.

Verdict: The takeaway is certainly due for a rethink, but while one of our panellists praised Housebites’ service – and cooking – another wondered just how much “engagement” people want with a chef, after a long day at work?

What: A members-only luxury travel club, offering “flash sale” discounts of up to 70% on handpicked hotels and holidays.

Founders: Tom Valentine, ex-eBay and Seatwave, Troy Collins, who previously founded cruiselinefans.com (“best described as a Facebook and TripAdvisor mashup for cruise ships”) and Alex Saint, co-founder of travel price comparison site dealchecker.co.uk.

Launched: 2011.

Pitch: Welcome to the worst-kept secret in luxury travel … We negotiate for luxury handpicked hotels and holidays in the UK and abroad. How? Well, even the most luxurious hotels don’t like having empty rooms.

What: A home design e-commerce site, offering exclusive items and limited edition pieces at membership-only prices. It was bought last month by design mega-marketplace Fab.com just 10 weeks after launch.

Founders:Vivienne Bearman – formerly producer/product manager at Playfish (acquired by Electronic Arts for $275m in 2009) and head of product at onefinestay.com – and Tracy Dorée, former investment manager at MMC Ventures.

Launched: 2011.

Verdict: Superbly executed site for design geeks, which barely had enough time to announce its presence before being snapped up by an established – and undoubtedly distinctly nervous – rival.

Pitch: Stylistpick puts the power of fashion in your hands so you can shop your way, whenever and however you want.

Verdict: The team is building a brand from scratch and have a loyal subscriber base, not least because of their clever use of celebrity partnerships. But is it distinct enough from the myriad other fashion retail sites out there?

Founders: Jeff Lynn, former corporate lawyer, and Carlos Silva, an “IT development and security expert”.

Launched: 2012.

Pitch: We can basically invest in a clever guy that’s written down his idea on the back of a napkin. In fact it’s dangerous not to. The crowd will decide.

Verdict: By allowing lots of people to put small amounts of money into new startups, Seedrs makes it easier for companies to get the start they need and allow anyone to put cash into high-risk but exciting new ventures. However, Britain’s spin on the Kickstarter model was only authorised by the Financial Services Authority in May, so it’s very early days.

What: The “unhotel” people. Onefinestay’s pitch is that it offers customers “the chance to stay in someone else’s place while they are out of town. You get to live their life for a few days.” Plus towels and toiletries.

What: Social shopping site Nuji’s pitch is that it’s “a social wish list”, on which users can save items from online boutiques and stores from all over the web, follow people with similar tastes and earn points towards discounts.

Pitch: We’re trying to create a social graph of people with similar tastes to you.

Verdict: The team is building the internet’s department store and with more than 20,000 stores and 500,000 products they are growing fast. Versus very general pinning sites, Nuji offers retailers a compelling shopping-focused partner. But it’s a crowded marketplace.

What: A very new company with an intriguing, if baffling, proposition, TraitPerception is setting out to “create a global ranking of people’s virtues”, by effectively crowdsourcing their traits. Eh? Nope, us neither.

Founders: Juan Cartagena, former head of strategy at Thus and Demon; José Ignacio Fernández, a PhD in computer science; and Borja Martin, ex-project manager and lead developer at Spanish news sitehola.com.

Launched: 2012.

Pitch: The next time you want to meet someone for the first time you can check that person’s anonymous references and score in advance.

Verdict: Sounds like it came from placing a moral philosopher, Stephen Hawking and an emeritus professor of machine learning in a blender.

What: Peerindex is a social analytics business, which is algorithmically mapping out social media to identify and score “influencers”, or opinion formers.

Founder: Azeem Azhar, a former business correspondent for theEconomist, strategy manager at the BBC and head of innovation at Reuters.

Launched: 2010.

Pitch: Understand your online social capital.

Verdict: As reputation and influence become more important, startups will take different approaches to help customers reward their best influencers. Peerindex could become one of the key startups in this field.